Unit 1: Chapters 1 and 13

Question 1

Fieldwork.

Answer 1

The study of geographic phenomena by visiting places and observing how people interact with and thereby change those places.

Question 2

Human Geography.

Answer 2

One of the two major divisions of geography; the spatial analysis of human population, its cultures, activities, and landscapes.

Question 3

Globalization.

Answer 3

The expansion of economic, political, and cultural processes to the point that they become global in scale and impact. The processes of globalization transcend state boundaries and have outcomes that vary across places and scales.

Question 4

Sequent Occupance.

Answer 4

The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape.

Question 5

Physical Geography.

Answer 5

One of the two major divisions of systematic geography; the spatial analysis of the structure, processes, and location of the Earth’s natural phenomena such as climate, soil, plants, animals, and topography.

Question 6

Spatial.

Answer 6

Pertaining to space on the Earth’s surface; sometimes used as a synonym for geographic.

Question 7

Spatial distribution.

Answer 7

Physical location of geographic phenomena across space.

Question 8

Cartography.

Answer 8

The art and science of making maps, including data compilation, layout, and design. Also concerned with the interpretation of mapped patterns.

Question 9

Patterns.

Answer 9

The design of a spatial distribution.

Question 10

Epidemic.

Answer 10

Regional outbreak of a disease.

Question 11

Geographic Information System (GIS).

Answer 11

A collection of computer hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated analyzed and displayed to the user.

Question 12

Spatial Perspective.

Answer 12

Observing variations in geographic phenomena across space.

Question 13

Five themes of geography.

Answer 13

Developed by the Geography Educational National Implementation Project (GENIP), the five themes of geography are location, human-environment, region, place, and movement.

Question 14

Location.

Answer 14

The first theme of geography as defined by the Geography Educational National Implementation Project; the geographical situation of people and things.

Question 15

Reference Maps.

Answer 15

Maps that show the absolute location of places and geographic features determined by a frame or reference, typically latitude and longitude.

Question 16

Location Theory.

Answer 16

A logical attempt to explain the locational pattern of an economic activity and the manner in which its producing areas are interrelated. The agricultural location theory contained in the von Thunen model is a leading example.

Question 17

Human Environment Interactions.

Answer 17

The second theme of geography as defined by the Geography Educational National Implementation Project; reciprocal relationship between humans and environment.

Question 18

Region.

Answer 18

The third theme of geography as defined by the Geography Educational National Implementation Project; an area on the Earth’s surface marked by a degree of formal, functional, or perceptual homogeneity of some phenomenon.

Question 19

Thematic Maps.

Answer 19

Maps that tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon.

Question 20

Place.

Answer 20

The fourth theme of geography as defined by the Geography Educational National Implementation Project; uniqueness of a location.

Question 21

Sense of place.

Answer 21

State of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in place or by labeling a place with certain character.

Question 22

Perception Of Place.

Answer 22

Belief or “understanding” about a place developed through books, movies, stories, or pictures.

Question 23

Remote Sensing.

Answer 23

A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments that are physically distant from the area or object of study.

Question 24

Movement.

Answer 24

The fifth theme of geography as defined by the Geography Educational National Implementation Project; the mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet.

Question 25

Spatial interaction (check complementarity and intervening opportunity).

Answer 25

Complementarity: a condition that exists when two regions, through an exchange of raw materials and/or finished products, can specifically satisfy each other’s demands. Intervening Opportunity: The presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away.

Question 26

Distances.

Answer 26

Measurement of the physical space between two places.

Question 27

Absolute Location.

Answer 27

The position or place of a certain item on the surface of the Earth as expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude, 0 degrees to 90 degrees north or south of the equator, and longitude, 0 degrees to 180 degrees west of the Prime Meridian passing through Greenwich, England (a suburb of London).

Question 28

Accessibility.

Answer 28

The degree of ease with which it is possible to reach a certain location from other locations. Accessibility varies from place to place and can be measured.

Question 29

Connectivity.

Answer 29

The degree of direct linkage between one particular location and other locations in a transport network.

Question 30

Landscape.

Answer 30

The overall appearance of an area. Most landscapes are comprised of a combination of natural and human-induced influences.

Question 31

Global Positioning System (GPS).

Answer 31

Satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features.

Question 32

Cultural Landscape.

Answer 32

The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape. The layers of buildings, forms, and artifacts sequentially imprinted on the landscape by the activities of various human occupants.

Question 33

Mental Maps.

Answer 33

Image or picture of the way space is organized as determined by an individual’s perception, impression, and knowledge of that space.

Question 34

Geocaching.

Answer 34

A hunt for a cache, the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates which are placed on the internet by other geocachers.

Question 35

Generalized Maps.

Answer 35

The map of world precipitation is a generalized map of mean annual precipitation received around the world.

Question 36

Relative Location.

Answer 36

The regional position or situation of a place relative to the position of other places. Distance, accessibility, and connectivity affect relative location.

Question 37

Activity Space.

Answer 37

The space within which daily activity occurs.

Question 38

Formal Region.

Answer 38

A type of region marked by a certain degree of homogeneity in one or more phenomena; also called uniform region or homogeneous region.

Question 39

Functional Region.

Answer 39

A region defined by the particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it.

Question 40

Perceptual Region.

Answer 40

A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity. For example, in the United States, “the South” and “the Mid-Atlantic region” are perceptual regions.

Question 41

Culture.

Answer 41

The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society. This is anthropologist Ralph Linton’s definition; hundreds of others exist.

Question 42

Culture Trait.

Answer 42

A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as the wearing of a turban.

Question 43

Culture Complex.

Answer 43

A related set of cultural traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils.

Question 44

Cultural Hearth.

Answer 44

Heartland, source area, innovation center; place of origin of a major culture.

Question 45

Independent Invention.

Answer 45

The term for a trait with many cultural hearths that developed independent for each other.

Question 46

Cultural Diffusion.

Answer 46

The expansion and adoption of a cultural element from its place of origin to a wider area.

Question 47

Time-Distance Decay.

Answer 47

The declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin of source.

Question 48

Cultural Barriers.

Answer 48

Prevailing cultural attitude rendering certain innovations, ideas or practices unacceptable or unadoptable in that particular culture.

Question 49

Expansion Diffusion.

Answer 49

The spread of an innovation or an idea through a population in an area in such a way that the number of those influenced grows continuously larger resulting in an expanding area of dissemination.

Question 50

Contagious Diffusion.

Answer 50

The distance-controlled spreading of an idea, innovation, or some other item through a local population by contact from person to person - analogous to the communication of a contagious illness.

Question 51

Hierarchical Diffusion.

Answer 51

A form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by passing first among the connected places or peoples. An urban hierarchy is usually involved, encouraging the leap-frogging of innovations over wide areas, with geographic distance a less important influence.

Question 52

Stimulus Diffusion.

Answer 52

A form of diffusion in which a cultural adaptation is created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place.

Question 53

Relocation Diffusion.

Answer 53

Sequential diffusion process in which the items being diffused are transmitted by their carrier agents as they evacuate the old areas and relocate to new ones. The most common form of relocation diffusion involves the spreading of innovations by a migrating population.

Question 54

Geographic Concept.

Answer 54

Ways of seeing the world spatially that are used by geographers in answering research questions.

Question 55

Political Ecology.

Answer 55

An approach to studying nature - society relations that is concerned with the ways in which environmental issues both reflect, and are the result of, the political and socioeconomic contexts in which they are situated.

Question 56

Environmental Determinism.

Answer 56

The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life, including cultural development. Also referred to as environmentalism.

Question 57

Possibilism.

Answer 57

Geographic viewpoint - a response to determinism - that holds that human decision making, not the environment, is the crucial factor in cultural development. Nonetheless, possibilists view the environment as providing a set of broad constraints that limits the possibilities of human choice.

Question 58

Cultural Ecology.

Answer 58

The multiple interactions and relationships between a place of origin to a wider area.

Question 59

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Answer 59

Synthetic organic compounds first created in 1950s and used primarily as refrigerants and as propellants. The role of CFCs in the destruction of the ozone layer led to the signing of an international agreement (the Montreal Protocol).

Question 60

Anthropocene.

Answer 60

Geological epoch defined by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen to acknowledge the central role humans play in shaping the Earth’s environment.

Question 61

Mass Depletions.

Answer 61

Loss of diversity through a failure to produce new species.

Question 62

Pangaea.

Answer 62

The primeval supercontinent, hypothesized by Alfred Wegener, that broke apart and formed the continents and oceans as we know them today; consisted of two parts - a northern Laurasia and a southern Gondwana.

Question 63

Tectonic Plates.

Answer 63

Large pieces of rocks that form portions of the Earth’s mantle and crust and which are in motion.

Question 64

Mass Extinctions.

Answer 64

Mass destruction of most species.

Question 65

Pacific Ring Of Fire.

Answer 65

Ocean-girdling zone of crustal instability, volcanism, and earthquakes resulting from the tectonic activity along plate boundaries in the region.

Question 66

Photosynthesis.

Answer 66

The formation of carbohydrates in living plants from water and carbon dioxide, through the structure, processes, and location of the Earth’s natural phenomena such as climate, soil, plants, animals, and topography.

Question 67

Pleistocene.

Answer 67

The most recent epoch of the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, beginning about 1.8 million years ago and marked by as many as 20 glaciations and interglaciations of which the current warm phase, the Holocene epoch, has witnessed the rise of human civilization.

Question 68

Glaciation.

Answer 68

A period of global cooling during which continental ice sheets and mountain glaciers expand.

Question 69

Interglacial.

Answer 69

Warm periods during an ice age.

Question 70

Wisconsin Glaciation.

Answer 70

The most recent glacial period of the Pleistocene, enduring about 100,000 years and giving way, beginning about 18,000 years ago, to the current interglacial, the Holocene.

Question 71

Holocene.

Answer 71

The current interglaciation period, extending from 10,000 years ago to present on the geological time scale.

Question 72

Little Ice Age.

Answer 72

Temporary but significant cooling period between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries accompanied by wide temperature fluctuations, droughts, and storms, causing famines and dislocation.

Question 73

Renewable Resources.

Answer 73

Resources that can regenerate as they are exploited.

Question 74

Nonrenewable Resources.

Answer 74

Resources that are present in finite quantities because they are not self-replenishing or take an extraordinarily long time to replenish.

Question 75

Environmental Stress.

Answer 75

The threat to environmental security by human activity such as atmospheric and groundwater pollution, deforestation, oil spills, and ocean dumping.

Question 76

Aquifers.

Answer 76

Subterranean, porous, water-holding rocks that provide millions of wells with steady flows of water.

Question 77

Hydrologic Cycle.

Answer 77

The system of exchange involving water in its various forms as it continually circulates among the atmosphere, the oceans, and above and below the land surface.

Question 78

Atmosphere.

Answer 78

Blanket of gases surrounding the Earth and located some 350 miles above Earth’s surface.

Question 79

Climate Change.

Answer 79

Long-term change in Earth’s climate, or in the climate of a region or city.

Question 80

Acid Rain.

Answer 80

A growing environmental peril whereby acidified rainwater severely damages plant and animal life; caused by the oxides of sulfur and nitrogen that are released into the atmosphere when coal, oil, and natural gas are burned, especially in major manufacturing zones.

Question 81

Oxygen Cycle.

Answer 81

Cycle whereby natural processes and human activity consume atmospheric oxygen and produce carbon dioxide and the Earth’s forests and other flora, through photosynthesis, consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Question 82

Deforestation.

Answer 82

The clearing and destruction of forests to harvest wood for consumption, clear land for agricultural uses, and make way for expanding settlement frontiers.

Question 83

Soil Erosion.

Answer 83

The wearing away of the land surface by wind and moving water.

Question 84

Sanitary Landfill.

Answer 84

Disposal sites for non-hazardous solid waste that is spread in layers and compacted to the smallest practical volume. The sites are typically designed with floors made of materials to treat seeping liquids and are covered by soil as the wastes are compacted and deposited into the landfill.

Question 85

Radioactive Waste.

Answer 85

Hazardous-waste-emitting radiation from nuclear power plants, nuclear weapon factories, and nuclear equipment in hospitals and industry.

Question 86

Toxic Waste.

Answer 86

Hazardous waste causing danger from chemical and infectious organisms.

Question 87

Biodiversity.

Answer 87

The total variety of plant and animal species in a particular place; biological diversity.

Question 88

Rare Earth Elements.

Answer 88

Seventeen chemical elements that commonly occur together but are difficult to separate. They are commonly used to make high-tech electronics and weapons systems.

Question 89

Ozone Layer.

Answer 89

The first international convention aimed at addressing the issue ozone depletion.

Question 90

Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer.

Answer 90

In the world today, approximately 1/7 - or one billion - of the population is malnourished. The vast majority of the one billion are women and children, who have little money and even less power.

Question 91

Describe the one billion malnourished people in the world. What do they have in common?

Answer 91

In the world today, approximately 1/7 - or one billion - of the population is malnourished. The vast majority of the one billion are women and children, who have little money and even less power.

Question 92

What is absolute location? What do geographers use to determine absolute location?

Answer 92

Absolute location is the exact position or place of a certain item on the surface of Earth. Geographers use latitude and longitude to determine absolute location.

Question 93

Describe what cultural complexes are. How are they different than cultural traits?

Answer 93

A culture complex is a related set of cultural traits, such as prevailing dress code, cooking, and eating utensils. More than one culture may exhibit a particular culture trait, but each will consist of a discrete combination of traits. It is different than a culture trait because a culture trait is a single attribute of a culture whereas a culture complex is a combination of more than one traits in a culture.

Question 94

Which theme of geography would deal with the logging of trees in the Cascade Mountains?

Answer 94

The theme of geography that would deal with the logging of trees in the Cascade Mountains is the theme of the Human-Environment interactions. The theme of the human-environment interactions would be the theme that deals with this because logging trees is a human-environment interaction that affects and alters the environment.

Question 95

What is relocation diffusion? How does it spread?

Answer 95

Relocation diffusion is defined as “the sequential diffusion processes in which the items being diffused are transmitted by their carrier agents as they evacuate the old areas and relocate to new ones. The most common form of relocation diffusion involves the spreading of innovations by a migrating population.” Relocation diffusion is different than stimulus or hierarchical or contagious diffusion as It involves the actual movement of people who have adopted an idea or innovation and carry it with them to a new (sometimes distant) location where they will disseminate it. Immigrants will bring adopted traits (or complexes) of their cultural to the places they have relocated and so even if their homeland loses a large part of its population and the cultural customs may fade in the hearth, it can gain strength in the ethnic neighborhoods of the new locale.

Question 96

Explain why scale is so important to geographers.

Answer 96

Scale has two definitions in geography: (1) the distance on a map compared to the distance on the Earth, and (2) the spatial extent of something. The second definition is most often used, and geographers study places and patters at a variety of scales which include local, regional, national, and global. Geographers are concerned with scale as the occurrence of a phenomena found at one scale is usually influenced by what is happening at other scales and to explain geographic patterns or processes requires looking across scales. Furthermore, the scale used in research or analysis matters because difference observations can be made at different scales.

Question 97

How does distance decay affect diffusion?

Answer 97

Distance decay helps to slow the spread of diffusion. Because the diffusion of a cultural trait depends in part on the time and distance from the hearth, the farther a place is from the hearth, the less likely an idea or innovation is to be adopted and the longer it takes to reach its potential adopters, the less likely the innovation is to be adopted.

Question 98

Describe your mental map of your activity spaces.

Answer 98

Maps that we carry in our minds of places we have been and places we have heard of are called mental maps. Mental maps depicting our activity spaces, or, the places we travel to routinely in our rounds of daily activity, are more accurate and detailed than places we’ve never been to. Mental maps of places we have never been to but routinely pass may include terra incognita which are unknown lands that are off-limits. An activity space of my own is Kentridge High school, which has a detailed mental map. My mental map would include the two rights and then the left it takes to arrive in the school parking lot, with all the homes I pass labeled as terra incognita. My mental map of KR would include the cafeteria which I routinely visit and the six classrooms I use and the hallways that I use to get between them.

Question 99

Summarize Gould and White’s research. What were the findings of their studies?

Answer 99

Gould and Whites research deals with the theme of place. Gould and White were geographers who asked college students in Pennsylvania, “if they were to move to any place, without any of the usual financial and other obstacles, where would you like to live?” Their research discovered that we have a strong bias for our home regions as the majority of the students wanted to live close to or in their home region. Their research also showed that students from both CA and PA have a negative perceptions of the South, Appalachia, the Great Plains, and Utah. The students most likely wanted to stay near their home region due to the sense of place they have developed, and they most likely do not want to live in the South, Appalachia, the Great Plains, and Utah because of the perception of place of those areas.

Question 100

What is hierarchical diffusion? What is the example (from the book) of it?

Answer 100

Hierarchical diffusion is a patter where the main channel of diffusion is some segment of those who are susceptible to (or adopting) what is being diffused. Hierarchical diffusion spreads ideas such as a new fashion trend or a new genre of music. An example is Crocs which spread to boating enthusiasts to gardeners to the American public where it became popular with children when they could adorn their Crocs with Jibbitz. Another example of hierarchical diffusion is the titanium baseball necklaces that originated in Japan and diffused between baseball players into the U.S.

Question 101

Describe stimulus diffusion? What are some examples of it?

Answer 101

Stimulus diffusion is a form of diffusion in which a cultural adaptation is created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place. Not all ideas can be readily and directly adopted by a receiving population as some ideas or innovations are too vague, different, unattainable, or impractical for immediate adoption. Instead, these ideas have an impact in which they may indirectly promote local experimentation and eventual changes in ways of doing these.
o Example: the diffusion of fast, mass-processed food in the late 1900s lead to the introduction of the hamburger to India. Because India is mostly Hindu, they do not eat beef as they view the cow as sacred and so instead retailers began to sell burgers made of vegetable products.

Question 102

What is possibilism? How does it affect cultural development?

Answer 102

Possibilism is the geographic viewpoint that was created in response to determinism that holds the human decision making, not the environment, as the crucial factor in cultural development. Nonetheless, possibilsts view the environment as providing a set of broad constraints that limits the possibilities of human choices. Geographers argue that the natural environment merely serves to limit the range of choices available to a culture. The choices that a society makes depends on what its members need and on what technology is available to them. Possibilism says that the environment limits human behavior instead of determining it. Possibilism has its limitations as it encourages the inquiry of what the physical environment allows when human cultures frequently push the boundaries of what is environmentally possible through ideas, ingenuity, and advances in technology. In the interconnected, technologically dependent world we live in today, it’s possible to transcend many of the limitations imposed by the natural environment. Possibilism could possible limit the development of a culture as they stand to create barriers in a culture as defined as what the environment can allow the population to do.

Question 103

What are perceptual regions? Give two examples of them.

Answer 103

Perceptual regions are regions that are primarily in the minds of people that are intellectual constructs designed to help us understand the nature and distribution of phenomena in human geography. Perceptual regions are regions that exists only as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity. For example, in the U.S., “the South” and the “Pacific Northwest” or “Mid-Atlantic region” are all perceptual regions.

Question 104

Hypothesize how the government might use remote sensing technology

Answer 104

The government might use remote sensing technology (which is achieved through geographers monitoring Earth from a distance that is collected by satellites and airplanes and are often available almost instantaneously) to analyze damage and the impact of destruction after weather or hazardous events like earthquakes or Hurricane Katrina. They may also use remote sensing technology in areas that restrict foreign access or foreign aid to understand the physical and human geography of a place.

Question 105

Brainstorm how geographic information systems could help corporations/companies?

Answer 105

GIS (a way to see representations of the environment) is used to analyze data which can give new insights to geographic patterns or relationships. This could be used by corporations or companies to survey wildlife, map soils, analyze natural disasters, track the spread of diseases, assist first responders in a disaster, plan cities, plan transportation improvements, or follow weather systems. These can all help corporations and companies to set up their base or make improvements.

Question 106

Summarize Hagerstrand’s work/research.

Answer 106

Torsten Hagerstrand was a Swedish geographer who published pioneering research on the role of time in the diffusion process in the 70s. His research discovered that time, as well as distance, affects human behavior and the process of diffusion of people and ideas. His work attracted many geographers to study the diffusion process and his work helped to create the time-distance decay.

Question 107

What is contagious diffusion? What is the example (from the book) of it?

Answer 107

Contagious diffusion is the distance-controlled spreading of an idea, innovation, or some other item through a local population by contact from person-to-person - analogous to the communication of a contagious illness. With contagious diffusion, nearly all adjacent individuals and places are affected. An example of contagious diffusion is Silly Bands.

Question 108

What is relative location? How is it different than absolute location?

Answer 108

Relative location describes the location of a place in relation to other human and physical features. While relative location describes the location of a place by using other places (ex. Next the store), absolute location uses a coordinate system that allows for the precise plotting of where on Earth something is expressed in longitude and latitude. Relative location is the general location of a place whereas absolute location is the exact location.

Question 109

Summarize how distance, connectivity and accessibility affect spatial interactions between places?

Answer 109

Distance refers to the measured physical space between two places and accessibility is the ease of reaching of one location from another. Spatial interaction are dependent on these two things as well as the transportation and the communication connectivity (the degree of linkage between locations from another) between places.

Question 110

Why does sequent occupance occur? Brainstorm 2 examples of it.

Answer 110

Sequence occupance (the sequential imprints of occupants whose impacts are layered one on top of the other with each layer having some impacts on the next) occur because any cultural landscape has layers of impressions from years of human activities. As each group of people arrive, they bring with them their own technological and cultural traditions and transform the landscape accordingly as they occupy a place. Each new group of residents can also be influenced by what they find when they arrive and leave some of it in place. Two examples are the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam (urban example of sequent occupance. Arabs from Zanibar chose the site in 1866 as a summer retreat, then German colonizers imprinted a new layout and architectural style in 1891 with the city as the center of their East African colonies, then British administration took over the city after WWI, and then Dar es Salaam became independent in the 60s.) The British encouraged immigration from their Indian colony to Tanzania and the new migrant Asian population created a zone of three-and-four apartment houses which look like they were transplanted from their hearth in Bombay, India.

Question 111

What are functional regions? Why is a city an example of one?

Answer 111

Functional regions is a region defined by a particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it. Laces that are part of the same functional region interact to create connections. Functional regions have a shared political, social, or economic purpose. A functional region is a spatial system with its boundaries defined by the limits of that system. These regions are not necessarily culturally homogeneous; instead, the people within the region function together politically, socially, or economically. A city has a surrounding region within which workers commute, either to the downtown area or to subsidiary centers such as office parks and shopping malls. That entire urban area, defined by people moving toward and within it, is a functional region.

Question 112

What causes tsunamis? Why should we (in the Pacific Northwest) be concerned about them?

Answer 112

A tsunami results from an earthquake that occurs undersea involving a large displacement of the Earth’s crust. Most submarine earthquakes don’t create tsunami, but in some cases a large piece of crust is pushed up and starts to roll away in all different directions. In the Pacific Northwest, we should be concerned with tsunamis because we live on two tectonic plates that could transform and cause an earthquake. Also, tsunamis of large magnitudes can have a large-scale impact on the global environment to the point where their force could be felt worldwide.

Question 113

Summarize the four projects that the Global Environmental Facility funds.

Answer 113

The Global Environmental Facility (GEF) funds the four major international conventions that focus on the environment which are the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. The GEF has issued $4.5 billion in grants between 1991-2010, mainly to projects that concern climate change or biodiversity. The GEF protects key elements of the global environment, but it still functions in a state-based world. Global environmental issues like biodiversity, protection of the ozone layer, and global climate change are issues that are so pressing that efforts are being made to draw up international guidelines for actions in the forms of treaties or conventions.

Question 114

Summarize the Kyoto Protocol.

Answer 114

In 1997, the Kyoto Agreement created a target period between 2008-2012 for the U.S., the European Union, and Japan to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 7,8, and 6 percent, respectively. The Agreement called for voluntary emission reduction plans to be put in place by countries with financial assistance from industrialized countries, as to not obligate less developed countries to adhere to specific reduction goals. The U.S. and China, which are both the world’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide, signed the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in 2012. In 2007, the U.S. was the top emitter with 19.4 tons of CO2 per capita, then the EU with 8.6 tons, China with 5.1 tons, and India with 1.8 tons. Then, China took the lead as the world’s largest total emitter of CO2 which was evident in the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Question 115

What chemicals cause the ozone layer to be depleted? Why is this something we should be concerned about? How does this relate to acid rain?

Answer 115

The human-made gases known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used mainly in refrigerators and fire extinguishers and aerosol cans are the main culprits in ozone depletion. The naturally occurring ozone in the ozone layer (which exists in the stratosphere between 30-45 kilometers in altitude). We should be concerned with ozone depletion because the ozone protects Earth’s surface from the sun’s harmful UV rays. Acid rain is related to ozone depletion because they are both by-products of the abundance of pollutants that are being spewed into the atmosphere.

Question 116

What type of geologic features are associated with plate tectonics? What is the Ring of Fire?

Answer 116

Geologic features that are associated with plate tectonics are oceans, mountains like the Himalayas, volcanoes, and earthquakes. The Pacific Ring of Fire is an ocean-girdling zone of crustal instability, volcanism, and earthquakes.

Question 117

How much water is there on the surface of the Earth? How many organisms live on Earth?

Answer 117

70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered in water and biologists estimate that there can be as many as 25 million types of organisms live on earth, maybe even more (of those, many have not yet been identified, classified, or studied). No species have ever affected the environment as strongly as humans do today.

Question 118

Compare/contrast the today’s pace of environmental change with the pace of environmental change in 1900.

Answer 118

The pace of environmental change has increased exponentially with a number of human activities. In the 20th century alone there was a fourfold increase in the human population (1.5 to 6 billion) which caused a greater strain on the environment with a higher demand of resources. There has been an increase in human population, consumption, and technology which are all factors that contribute to environmental change. Unlike in the 1900s, we have newer technology that can potentially create more pollution.

Question 119

Where on the Earth does it rain the most? How does this affect the vegetation in these areas?

Answer 119

It rains the most along the Equator which has a positive effect on the vegetation as the warmer weather and increased precipitation the Equator brings yields more vegetation.

Question 120

Which field of study considers the roles of politics, history and economics in shaping human environmental interactions?

Answer 120

The field of study that considers the roles of politics, history, and economics in shaping human environmental interactions is political ecology. Political ecology is defined as, “the area of study fundamentally concerned with the environmental consequences of dominant political-economic arrangements and understandings.”

Question 121

possiblism

Answer 121

Geographic viewpoint- a response to determinism- that holds that human decision making, not the environment, is the crucial factor in cultural development. Nonetheless, possibilists view the environment as providing a set of broad constraints that limits the possibilities of human choice

Question 122

rescale

Answer 122

Involvement of players at other scales to generate support for a position or initiative (use of internet to generate interest on a national or global scale for a local position or initiative)